As the most expensive Bollywood
film ever made, "The Rising" might be expected to deliver lavish
song-and-dance numbers, old fashioned melodrama and plot twists out of a
Dickens novel in ample supply to those both familiar and unfamiliar with this
genre. That the film also commemorates the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 in terms
reminiscent of Gillo Pontecorvo's "Burn"
sets it apart from the standard fare coming out of India's
film industry. ("The Rising" is scheduled for worldwide release on
August 12th, to coincide with India's
Independence Day, which arrives this weekend.)

For those who have never seen a Bollywood
film before, you might find it a jarring although pleasant experience. Imagine
a John Ford western with John Wayne riding into his home town pursued by a
vigilante mob. Upon dismounting he joins old friends in a production number out
of Rogers and Hammerstein that celebrates small town virtues. But when the
vigilante mob arrives, the singers and dancers switch gears and begin to blaze
away at them with six-guns. That is basically the esthetic framework for Bollywood films, which derived their name from combining Bombay
and Hollywood.

"The Rising" focuses on an historical figure, the
sepoy MangalPandey who was
hung by the British in the early stages of the revolt. (The word sepoy is Urdu
for soldier.) His martyrdom only helped to deepen the anger of a population
that had been suffering from one hundred years of East India Company
oppression. When the sepoys and their allies rose up,
polite opinion in Western Europe viewed them as savages.
There were exceptions of course:

However infamous the
conduct of the sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated
form, of England's own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the
foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a
long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture
formed an organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in
human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that
its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.

--Karl Marx, "The Indian Revolt," New
York Daily Tribune, Sept. 4, 1857

MangalPandey
is played by Aamir Khan, the charismatic star of the
2001 "Lagaan," another anti-colonial but
comic film that revolves around a cricket match between British soldiers and
Indian villagers who never played the game before. If the villagers win, they will
enjoy freedom from taxes (lagaan) for three years.

Another historical character portrayed in the film is
Captain William Gordon (Toby Stephens) who is Mangal's
commanding officer and close friend. In the opening scene, we see Gordon being
rescued from Afghan riflemen by Mangal, who then
gives the sepoy his pistol in gratitude.

When rumors circulate that pig and cow fat is being used to
grease the cartridges for the new Enfield
rifles being deployed in India,
the sepoys are horrified. Since they are required to
bite off the end of the cartridge before loading powder into the Enfield
barrel, both Hindu and Moslem religious sensitivities are assaulted: the first
for the misuse of the sacred cow; the second for having to come in contact with
an unclean animal. The film makes clear that the East India Company chose to
use animal fat because it is cheap. Director Ketan
Mehta is unstinting in his view of British greed and cruelty.

When the sepoys are assembled on
the parade ground and ordered to test the new rifles, none steps forward except
Mangal who has been assured by his friend Captain
Gordon that the cartridges are not tainted. When he subsequently learns that he
has been betrayed, he flies into a rage and becomes a central leader of a
movement to make war on the British.

"The Rising" exposes the profit-making nature of
British colonialism at odds with the pompous speeches about
"civilization" delivered by the military brass throughout the film.
Gordon is never quite comfortable among the elite officers since he is
Scottish, Catholic and lower-middle class. Not much is known about the
historical Gordon, except for the fact that his sympathies were with the rebels
and that he might have even fought with them. Leaving aside questions of
historical accuracy, the character is essential for the dramatic development of
the film since he embodies the moral complexities at work in the mind of a
professional soldier faced with blatant injustice. In explaining the role of
Gordon as a conflicted colonial soldier, director Mehta said, "It's not
white and black. We're dealing in multiple shades of characterisation
and multiple perspectives."

At one point, Gordon rescues a young woman condemned to
sati, a Hindu funeral custom in which the widow was burned alive with a newly
deceased husband and that had been outlawed by the British. She then becomes
his lover. The British opposition to this practice, which they called suttee, has
been analyzed by post-Marxist theorist GayatriSpivak in "Can the Subaltern Speak" as a
mechanism for the continued domination of India.
The British claim that they are rescuing Indian women but are really more interested
in superprofits.You find the same sort of dynamic at
work in opposition to the chador in Afghanistan
or the veil in Algeria
during the French occupation. The film takes Gordon's opposition to
wife-burning at face value but we are still left with the feeling that British
presence, despite its willingness to attack superstition, does more harm than
good.

In terms reminiscent of contemporary globalization theory,
"The Rising" dramatizes the way in which the East India Company's
tentacles penetrated far and wide. We learn that Indian villagers are forced to
grow poppies for opium exports to China
since that is the only commodity that can be exchanged for Chinese silk and
tea. When some villagers begin selling poppies to a local trader in violation
of an East India Company monopoly protected by British law, MangalPandey and his fellow sepoys
are ordered to fire on them and burn down their houses.

In a key scene, Mangal and Captain
Gordon are discussing the growing rift between the Indian soldiers and their
British commanders. After warning Gordon that the sepoys
will destroy the Company, Mangal then asks, "What
is a company?" It is clear that the Indian soldier has about as much of a grasp
of the operations of multinationals as many soldiers fighting on their behalf
do today. Gordon explains that the Company is like a multi-headed god from the
Hindu religion except that it has more than a thousand heads and operates
solely on the basis of making profit.

Whether the director or screenwriter had modern day Iraq
or Afghanistan
in mind when they began working on this project, the similarities are striking.
Historian William Dalrymple, whose next book
"The Last Mughal" deals with the 1857
revolt, has pointed out that the revolt had a Muslim character in Delhi, where
words like fatwa, mudjahadeen and jihad were all in
play.

For a scholarly discussion of the historical role of MangalPandey, I strongly
recommend the Chapati Mystery blog, which has begun a
series of articles on the martyred sepoy. This cooperative blog "where the
empire is resisted" was created in honor of the 1857 rebellion and one of
the contributors can be reached at sepoy@chapatimystery.com!

At half past three on
Sunday March 29th, 1857, a sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry named MangalPandey put on his red army
coat and hat, but left his traditional dhotti on
instead of the standard issue pantaloon, grabbed his musket and went out to the
regiment ground shouting - "Come out, you bhainchutes
[sister-fuckers], the Europeans are here. From biting these cartridges we shall
become infidels. Get ready, turn out all of you." When the sergeant-major
came rushing out, MangalPandey
took a shot at him and sent him hiding. The adjutant Lt. Baugh was informed and
he rushed out on his horse with a brace of pistols in the holster. As he
entered the regiment ground, MangalPandey shot the horse from under him. Baugh jumped off the
horse and fired on Pandey who was reloading. Then he
drew out his sword and rushed at Pandey who dropped
his musket and drew out a talwar. They fought
ferociously until Pandey seriously injured Baugh who
retreated before the fatal blow could fall. At the same moment, sepoy Sheikh Pultoo grabbed MangalPandey and called on the JemadarIshwariPandey of the guard to
help bring Panday down. The Jemadar
never moved an inch; MangalPandey
wrestled himself free and wounded Pultoo as well. The
men of Barrackpore stood and watched as the first
struggle of the mutiny played out before them.